Outsourced Call Centers Losing Feasibility?

"BusinessWeek is running an article about how outsourcing call centers in India are no longer an 'inexpensive option' for American companies. These shops are now striving for better outsourced work from the U.S. and Europe multinational companies; many are fed up with U.S. clients trying to continually lower prices. New Delhi-based EXL Services, for example, terminated a contract with Dell Inc. because EXL was losing money in the deal."

I wouldn't write off outsourcing just yet. If the US increases the minimum wage as proposed, this may pretty firmly establish a class of jobs that are much inherently cheaper to fill offshore when possible.

Odd... Jobs leave the US for India, causing Americans to get hungry. Then Indian outsourcers start rejecting those jobs because they pay so low the Indians go hungry. Sounds like there's a worldwide hunger crisis in the works, so to speak.

So if India can demand better wages and reject outsource work, can America have those jobs back? We already know the language. Or will we have to wait until Business is done exploiting China and the third- and fourth-world countries? Some companies have come to their senses, but not all and not fast enough.

Which brings to mind a Dilbert strip about how the outsourced work had been so undercut while being bounced to foreign markets that eventually it went to the lowest bidder -- the original company.

Outsourcing usually involves getting rid of entry level positions in a company. Look at the job ads today and the current "Junior" or "Entry level positions" in IT require years of experience just to be considered. It used to be that if you graduated college, you had a shot at the first rung in the company.

Now that there is no low level pool of workers in the company to promote, businesses are having a hell of a time finding people to hire for higher level positions. I was just looking at [avaya.com], a local branch. Every single one of their job ads required 5 to 8 years of experience in the specific job field. Almost every time I talk to someone about how hard it is to find good IT help, I tell them to grab someone from their internship program. Usually their response is "Oh, right, we should implement one of those."

And if all human beings are equally deserving of those opportunities, then you should be against outsourcing. Because those opportunities are no longer available in the host country.